


Voices Woken

by centreoftheselights



Category: Original Work
Genre: Ocean, Other, Swimming, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2016-02-01
Packaged: 2018-05-17 16:07:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5877091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/centreoftheselights/pseuds/centreoftheselights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She makes her way down to the cove, to where the sea washes her troubles away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Voices Woken

**Author's Note:**

> Doesn't technically contain drowning, but if that's a problem for you, I wouldn't read this.

She starts pulling off her clothes as soon as her feet touch the sand, kicking off her sandals and tugging her shirt over her head to reveal the black Lycra swimsuit underneath. She discards them in a heap somewhere near the path down from the cliffs, well above the high tide line. Not that she should be out there that long.

She isn't supposed to be out here alone, not really – but she's been swimming at this beach since she was a kid and there aren't any dangerous currents to speak of so long as she stays well inside the mouth of the cove. She's done this a thousand times before, and she's always been safe enough. Why should this time be any different?

She sprints down the beach to the sea, her bare feet slapping on the wet sand with every step. The first splash of cold water against her ankles takes her breath away but she keeps moving, running out into the waves until she's waist deep and wading out further still. The chill of the water aches in her bones, sending a fierce rush of blood pulsing through her ears with each step, her mind blank white from the almost-pain of it. Still, she forces herself deeper, until her tip-toes can no longer reach the sand underneath her, and she kicks herself off and away from the ground at last.

She treads water for a minute or two, relishing the freedom of it. There are no responsibilities in the sea, and no worries – no room in this endless expanse of blue for the angry red letters on the doorstep. There are no raised voices or muffled sobs, only the crash of the waves and the cries of the gulls, and the air tasting of salt on her tongue.

Once she's adjusted to the cold, she launches herself into a front crawl, letting herself become nothing more than the smooth arc of her muscles, the sharp sting at the corner of her eyes, the powerful rush of water she leaves in her wake.

She's swum in a pool before, but nothing compares with the sea. There's no distance out here, no lap to reach the end of. It's endless, ancient, powerful. If you swim like you're fighting the water, then against the ocean you will always lose. So, she thinks, the trick is not to fight it.

After a while she surfaces, looks around. She's nearer the cove-mouth than she thought, and through that gap in the cliffs she can see the open ocean, stretching off beyond the horizon. She should turn back, head towards the beach again.

If she turned around now, she would be able to see her house on the clifftop. She doesn't turn.

Instead, she stretches herself out, floating on her back until she can see nothing but the sky above her – a bright mackerel sky, dappled with soft white clouds. She lets her tired muscles rest a while, and tries to fill herself with this moment, quiet and alone and almost-daring, at home in the sea in a way she has never felt anywhere else.

The first time it happens, she barely even notices, but when it comes again, she is sure. Something swimming past her in the water, something large. It's rare to find large fish in the cove, but it wouldn't be the first time it's happened. She's even seen seals in the distance before. Reluctantly, she rights herself, treading water as the searches the waves for any sign of the disturbance.

The third time it passes her, she sees – something, she's not quite sure. It moves so fast she can hardly make it out. A dark shape, a shadow – and for a moment, she could have sworn there was a face in the ripples of water that surround her.

She swallows, and calls out: “Hello?”

Her voice seems impossibly small, lost in a moment to the roaring wind, and all at once, the distant rumble of waves breaking against the beach seems far closer than it did before.

“Hello?” she calls again, as loud as she dares. “Is someone there?”

This time the presence approaches slowly, emerging from the water like an optical illusion, as though the shape of it had always been hidden just beneath the swell of the waves.

She blinks, not believing her eyes.

A face rises up from the water, calm and serene and entirely inhuman. It's made not of skin, but of something which ripples and glistens like the depths of the sea, halfway between water made solid and the fluid glint of sealskin, with foam-bright eyes and a scraggle of seaweed for hair.

She is breathless, terrified, transfixed. The roar of the waves is deafening.

“What – what are you?”

A smile curves its lips. A distant chorus of gulls begin to caw, and their calls sound almost like laughter.

She knows she should flee, but she is drawn in, drawn closer to it, until she could reach out to touch.

The world seems to be holding its breath, waiting to see what she will do.

Its eyes watch her without blinking.

She can no longer hear the waves over the aching rhythm of her own heart.

Quickly, desperately shy but urgent in her yearning, she reaches out a hand, places it against its face. The texture is like nothing but the caress of the salt air in her lungs, bitter and wild and free, and all at once she realises what she is being offered.

She doesn't hesitate.

Surging forward, she draws their faces together, and presses her lips against its in a kiss as desperate as drowning.

The sea fills her lungs, she breathes it in and drinks it down, consumes its deepest chasms and the sparkling glint of it in sunlight. There are dolphins in her stomach and starfish in her hair and she is huge, mighty and eternal, incomprehensible and nevermore alone.

At the mouth of the cove, two clumps of seaweed sink beneath the waves. For a moment there is a shape in the water like a pair of hands, clasped together tight – but then the next wave rolls by, and washes it away.

On the beach, an untidy heap of clothes sits on the sand, buffeted by the wind.

And elsewhere, far out at sea, the wind is howling and the gulls cry into it, like the song of two voices in perfect harmony.


End file.
